


It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Boozemas

by merriman



Category: Black Books
Genre: Christmas, Drinking, Gen, Ornaments as Projectiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 22:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Bernard's not feeling very festive. Manny believes that pelting him with oranges will fix this. As should be obvious to anyone but Manny, it does not.





	It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Boozemas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ascanios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascanios/gifts).



"You've got to come back," Manny had said on the phone when Fran had called. Truth be told, she'd been rather hoping for an excuse to cut her visit with her relatives short. It was miserable being stuck in a house full of people she barely knew and cared about not one bit and everyone was drinking horrible lager, not horrible wine, and she couldn't for the life of her remember why she'd agreed to the trip in the first place.

Well. It was Christmas. That was probably why. Sometimes there were gifts in the offing, but apparently everyone was giving gag gifts this year and Fran could only feign amusement at inflatable crowns for so long. 

In any event, Fran had called the shop to check on Bernard and Manny and see if they desperately needed her. And they had! Or Manny had. She had heard Bernard shouting incoherently in the background, but that didn't mean much. It was Bernard, after all. Shouting incoherently was his favorite mode of communication.

"What's going on?" Fran had asked. But before Manny could answer with actual words she heard a shriek and then the distinctive sound of a bookcase tipping over. 

"It's an emergency!" Fran had called to her family as she hurried out of the house, grabbing a tin full of biscuits on her way through the kitchen.

Now she stood in the shop doorway and stared at the field of battle before her. In the shop's front window was a delightful display of books stacked to look like fir trees, decorated with bookmarks hanging like ornaments. Electric candles flickered and somehow Manny had gotten some realistic looking snow spread about on the shelf at the bottom of the display. Fran dearly hoped it was fake snow. But, well, if it wasn't then that also wasn't her problem. It wasn't her shop. Though at the moment it didn't look much like a shop at all.

The front window display was nice, yes, but inside the shop a war was being waged. Lights and tinsel festooned the front half of the space, along with a bedraggled-looking tree in one corner. The back half of the room, on the other hand, was utterly devoid of decoration. It was devoid of many things, such as books, as well. The books had all been stacked into two walls that divided the room, with an empty space between them. 

While Fran stood there, trying to figure out just what Bernard and Manny had gotten up to, a piece of something came flying towards her and hit the open door with a thunk, then fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up and then dropped it.

"Bernard!" she called into the shop. "Why did someone just fling coal at me?"

"Shut the door!" Bernard called back. Fran figured him to be somewhere behind his desk, which had been upended and was now serving as some sort of barricade. "I can hear carols!"

"They're festive!" Manny shouted. He was huddled behind the sofa, which had also been upended and was being used as a shelter, propped up on stacks of boxes covered in shiny wrapping paper that had seen better days. Lumps of coal littered the floor along with broken glass and pine needles. 

"Festiveness is a pox upon my house!" Bernard shouted.

Another lump of coal hit the wall by the front window and Fran hastily shut the door, then stepped further into the shop. Her shoes crunched on glass and she kicked away a few pieces of coal. The wall of books on Manny's side had curled ribbons tying bundles of books together and lights along the side of it visible to the front of the store. Fran had to give Manny credit for dedication to a cause, but she still wasn't entirely sure of the cause at hand.

"What on Earth is going on in here?" she asked. "I cannot possibly be the sensible one right now."

"He said Scrooge was the hero, Fran!" Manny said from behind the sofa. Fran glanced over toward the back of the shop but Bernard wasn't visible.

"Well, to be fair," Fran said, crouching down and inspecting the floor for glass before crawling behind the sofa with Manny. "Scrooge is the hero. That's the point."

"Not the way he meant it!" Manny insisted. 

Fran took stock of what Manny had behind the sofa with him. There looked to be a tin of shortbread and two fruitcakes along with a few gallons of eggnog and an entire crate of tiny oranges. He also had two sacks full of glass ball ornaments and a candy cane sharpened into a nasty point. A couple more pieces of coal sailed over their heads and smacked into an empty bookcase. Manny grabbed an ornament and an orange and lobbed both over at Bernard's side of the room. The ornament smashed against something, but they heard a muffled string of curses from Bernard, which suggested the orange had found its mark.

"This is ridiculous," Fran muttered. "This can't possibly be just because of a disagreement about Dickens."

"He tore down the tree!" Manny said, gesturing to the tree in the corner. True, it looked like it had been mangled by a reindeer, but Manny seemed to have rescued it enough to stand it upright again. "He outlawed decorations and he threatened to make my nose red by catching it in a mousetrap."

"Bernard!" Fran called. "Is that true?"

No answer.

Fran put her hands up from behind the sofa and called out to Bernard, "I'm coming over there! Neutral party!"

She crawled out from behind the sofa and got up, brushing coal dust off herself before making her way around the ruins of several holiday displays Manny had apparently tried to set up before Bernard had used them for target practice. When she reached the first wall of books, Fran just walked around them. It wasn't like the walls were particularly well made. Bernard and Manny were many things but none of those things meant they were good at building anything. Fran was suddenly reminded of the Ikea incident and had to shake herself out of it. Anyhow, they were banned from Ikea, so it wasn't like it was ever going to happen again. 

On Bernard's side of the room, the floor was littered with broken ornaments and smashed oranges. Bernard himself was seated behind the desk, apparently quite comfortable with a space heater plugged into an outlet in the flat behind the curtain and a whole pile of takeaway containers and leftover pizza he'd clearly gotten from the kitchen.

He also had a coal scuttle next to him and Fran couldn't help but wonder where the hell he'd gotten it from. Certainly, she'd never seen it before. There was a smell of something burnt, but she couldn't quite figure it out beyond knowing it wasn't from the coal. Bernard was reading while he sat there, but he looked up when Fran sat down next to him.

"Very cozy," she commented. "So what's this about Scrooge and no festivities?"

"He tried to make me wear a jumper," Bernard muttered, looking back at his book. "I don't wear jumpers. You know that."

"It can't have been that bad," Fran said. Then she stopped. No. It could be that bad.

Bernard glanced at her, then pointed to a sodden mess of something that was apparently the source of the burnt smell.

"It played Jingle Bell Rock when you pushed the nose on the reindeer on the front," Bernard explained. "Didn't burn very well, but I made my point."

"Which was that festiveness would be met by fire?" Fran asked. "Look, Bernard, I understand. I would have burned it too. Or at least tossed it in the bin. But you crushed a Christmas tree. That's not very nice."

"I'm not nice! I'm naughty!" Bernard shouted. "You hear that, Cindy Lou Who?" he called towards the front of the shop before tossing some coal in Manny's general direction. In response, Manny lobbed another orange at them.

There was something missing from Bernard's side of the room. Fran couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was definitely something missing. It wasn't the chair, which was currently being used to prop up a piece of cardboard that read "NO-EL" on it. It wasn't the ashtray, which was perched on a stack of books next to Bernard. Then, it struck her.

No. It couldn't be. It was unthinkable. Fran looked around, quite certain she must just have missed it. But no. There was absolutely nothing to drink. Well, there was water in the kitchen, but that wasn't to drink. It was to make ice to pour drinks over. This meant Bernard was sober. No wonder he was in such a foul mood. Well. Fouler than usual. 

"Right. I'll be back in a few minutes," Fran told Bernard. "Don't set anything else on fire while I'm gone." She got up and went back through the shop, pausing at the door to look at Manny. "Stay strong. I'll be right back."

Manny nodded and gripped his candy cane poker. "If he tries to make an advance past the fallen mistletoe, I'm doomed," he whispered. "Hurry!"

Fran just shook her head and left. She had a plan, if only the shop she needed was still open.

Ten minutes later, it didn't appear that the shop had burned down. When Fran walked in, Manny was still huddled behind the sofa. She gestured for him to join her.

"Bernard, Manny, time out on your little war, okay?" she said, leading Manny to the middle of the shop, in between the two walls. "I'm going to negotiate for peace." She set down the bag she'd brought back with her and waited for Bernard to come out and join them. When he didn't, she grabbed a string of tinsel garland and stalked over to his side to brandish it at him. "I will hang this over your door if you don't come join us," she threatened. 

Bernard glared, but did as he was told. 

Once she had both of her friends standing in the middle with her, she looked at Manny. "You want a festive holiday in the shop, yes?"

Manny nodded. "It's just a bit of fun!"

"And you don't want any festive holiday decoration at all," she continued to Bernard.

"It's rubbish!" Bernard hissed.

"Well, you need to come to some sort of agreement," Fran told them. "Manny controls the entrance right now, so Bernard, soon your food supply will run out. You know very well that you can't subsist just by hunting the rats in the garden."

"Not enough meat on them," Bernard reluctantly agreed. 

"And Manny, Bernard controls the entire flat, including the toilets," Fran pointed out. "So, we're going to have a little drink together and hash this out."

She picked up the bag she'd brought back from the shops and took out a bottle. There were two more in the bag, but one would likely be more than enough.

"Christmas Cheer," she told them, grinning as she showed it first to Bernard, then to Manny. "Made by the fine company that brought us Life Cry."

Bernard made a grabbing motion, and he almost got it too. His reaction time was impressive when he wasn't drinking a jug of wine a day. But Fran's instincts were well-honed and she moved it out of the way. Manny seemed a little more dubious.

"It's green. Is that reindeer on the label beating up an elf?" he asked.

"I always thought the elf was winning," Fran confided. She unscrewed the cap and took a swig, then offered it to Manny. "No going overboard," she told him. "Front window, some lights and tinsel, boozy fruitcake and eggnog to be shared with myself and Bernard."

Manny took the bottle and drank, then handed it back, face flushed. "Agreed!"

Fran smiled and handed the bottle to Bernard. "No burning any decorations, no hurting Manny until after New Year's, and we give the coal to the rotten customers who come in looking for last minute deals."

Bernard looked as though he might refuse, but the prospect of eggnog, fruitcake, and the Christmas Cheer was too much. He nodded. "Fine!" then grabbed the bottle and drank, downing a good quarter of it on his own.

Fran took the bottle back and drank again, then passed it back to Manny. After that, it was a bit of a blur.

The next morning Fran awoke to a shop that was still an utter mess, but she'd at least somehow managed to right the sofa at some point and fall asleep on that. Bernard and Manny were passed out in the middle of the shop, having fallen asleep leaning against each other. The lights strung up on Manny's side of the wall had somehow gotten tangled around them, and were now blinking. Manny was wearing a Christmas jumper with pompoms all over it.

Each of them held an empty bottle of Christmas Cheer.

Well. There was a good chance then that they might actually sleep through 'til Boxing Day. Perfect.


End file.
